Maoyu (DVD) Review

I'll say
one thing for Maoyu, if nothing else
– it is certainly unique.

It's not a giant mecha story. It's not a magical girl story. It's not a harem
anime, an urban fantasy anime, or a cyberpunk anime. Instead, it's a narrative
primarily concerned with breast jiggles, internal politics and ecology. Lots,
and lots, and lots of ecology.

The
premise owes a bit to the Italian commedia
dell’arte form of drama using particular stock character types to tell a
story. Instead of named protagonists we have people like Hero and Female
Knight, and instead of a grandiosely-named villain we have the Demon King; the
latter is a double-misnomer being that she’s not a demon and not a man.

The
story opens with a war between humans and demons winding down as Hero goes into
the Demon King’s lair to do final battle, only to find the aforementioned
double-misnomer who’s actually taken the Demon King’s mantle as a ceremonial
title with detachable demon horns. Also she has rather large breasts, a fact
the anime keeps throwing into very
sharp relief with the ever-present sound effects and boob-jiggles you would not
expect in an anime concerned with the horrors of war and how to grow crops.

No,
you didn’t read that last part wrong; once Hero and Demon King work things out,
Demon King explains the real enemy are actually the humans inside the decadent
ruling class city who have been propagating war for so long as to make a ton of
money from it. She then proposes ways in which to stimulate the economic and
ecological makeup of the kingdom by providing food and safe harbour for those
devastated by the war’s effects.

Following
from that is a very, very in-depth
guide of how to grow crops and have them fertilised by pigs. No, seriously; where Maoyu’s utter uniqueness enters
play is through the excruciatingly detailed outlines of ecology and harvesting.
In Episode 3 there’s a section detailing a quartered barley harvesting square
that I swear took up a good half of the episode all on its own, and I’m not
even exaggerating. If ever you wanted an idea of how to manage a farm and food
during wartime, Maoyu might be the
anime you didn’t even know you were waiting for.

While
I do like the spin on classic anime fantasy tropes and the subversion of having
things like the big, bad, evil Demon King actually be a very self-aware and
curvaceous young woman, I have to say Maoyu
was disappointing overall. The constant uses of shonen humour in regards to the
Demon King’s breasts and the Hero’s naivete got boring, the story kinda got
subsumed by pointless digressions after the first couple of episodes, and I
extracted no entertainment whatsoever from being shown an illustrated guide on
how to cultivate turnips and potatoes. For a moment I even forgot I was
watching an anime series and thought I’d stumbled into an animated episode of Burke’s Backyard with the amount of
gardening detail Maoyu had.

As I
said, though, it’s certainly unique, and it deserves a look based on that
alone. The animation is pretty gorgeous, with great use of colour, though faces
occasionally are missing lines connecting tops and bottoms of eyes and lips
which can make them look like partial burn victims. Music was pretty good, and
the Japanese-only voice acting was well-executed.

But
on the whole, I was not a fan of Maoyu.
It’s apparently gangbusters popular in Japan, so take my word for whatever it’s
worth, but I guess I don’t really fit in the niche this anime’s trying to
target. If realistic wartime ecology and growing potatoes appeals to you in an
anime juxtaposed with battles and heroic archetypes, then Maoyu may scratch your itch.

1
comments
:

This series is absolutely amazing and unique. I was so drawn into it when i started watching, then it went on about ecology and politics a bit. the 6/10 rating might be because it wasn't as action(y) as some thought but my take on it was, even though a little slow i was always captivated by the wit and intelligence of the characters. The hazards the demon king faced later in the series had me on edge for a bit and unsure of what the hero would do kept me peaked until the end of the series. These characters are quite memorable for me as an anime i cant stop thinking about sometimes. 7/10